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Weighing the Facts: Joomla Vs. Drupal

As I'm just beginning work on a new website, I've been considering the future and whether or not I should convert from Joomla to Drupal as both seem to really lead the industry in terms of actual CMS(where as say, wordpress is more typically blog-style)

I've been using Joomla for the past year or so, as before that I was hand-coding everything.. of course i see CMS as being the next big step of web design.. almost like going to Windows from DOS.

I've spent that past few hours of this morning scouring the internet's articles and forum discussions regarding Joomla Vs. Drupal and my consclusion is that too many of these discussions are simply saturated by opinions that merely resemble facts. What it really seems to come down to is what you really want to expect from your site down the road.

Joomla being said is the quickest, easiest, and neatest.
Drupal being said is the most stable, most flexible, and secure.

You can find numberous variations of these discussions, but I have yet to be able to make a real final conclusion.

Being careful not to judge by opinions, but rather looking at the facts, what would you say is going to be the best path for a community-driven website with hopes of growing into something very large?

Opinions often being affected by the fact that a person has used one more than the other, therefor they find it easier to use(of course they are more fluent in one than the other)

Also, take into consideration the phase of development. For instance, lets say Drupal is the more idealy structured code, and is more stable.. and lets say that this one fact is the one that puts Drupal in the lead. If this is the case, where do you see Joomla a few years from now? Would it be safe to assume that they are fully aware of their flaws and will soon be everything Drupal is, and more?(yes, straying back to opinions and assumptions now)

Now, again.. back to opinions here but, I love Joomla for it's so easy on the eyes, and so easy to quickly do in hours what would normally take days. I love the structure of code that controls the layout.(I haven't yet used Drupal so can't compare), and despite what I see many say, I don't think a Joomla site is limited by any means, and not at all difficult to make modifcations to anything. It's just a matter of learning your way around as is the case with any software.

Have any of you fluently used both systems?
Can you point out the facts about each that might help you make your decision, whatever it may be?

If anything, what do you find to be the major downfalls of each?

FYI, I would like this site to be very versatile and extremely expandable(open to any possible additions in the future). But at the same time, I would like to get it up and going as quickly and as easily as possible. I need to be able to focus more on the all important "content" rather than making the design happen.

I have a decent amount of experience with Joomla, but only a day or two with Drupal. It was easier for me to Modify joomla's code, and I felt it was better organized, but that could be because I didn't take the time to understand Drupal's setup.

If you're looking at expandability, the ease of both writing and installing modules via Joomla will likely allow for greater expansion then with Drupal.

Ugh, it's such a tough call when everything is weighed, but for support and ease of expansion, I'd say that Joomla wins.... for now.

Well, good luck with that, it really does come down to a personal decision, have you tried demoing them thoroughly? http://www.opensourcecms.com

I did have a look at some point this morning. Mainly just to have a look at the back-end of Drupal. First impression was bad as is with most. Since usability was really all I was going to be able to gather from the demo, I didn't spend any time using it.

And the biggest issue in comparison seems to be stability in code, security holes..etc.

Drupal is more of a community of coders making the software apparently better coded, with better code support.

Where as,

Joomla is more of a community of designers. Much easier to come up with cosmetic improvements such as templates, and nice-looking extensions, but often lacking in the coding department resulting in more bugginess.

I just don't think I have the time to not only learn a new software such as Drupal, but to also spend the time it would take to make a design look nice and professional. I would have a more stable and more secure site, that severely lacks in design apparently.

You know, designing your own CMS is an option. It's not as difficult as you would imagine.

Originally, at the site here: octonline.org, we were using a custom built template with Joomla, but because of sloppy code and the extra difficulty with PCI compliance (SSL additions, injection testing *failed*), we decided to go with our own solution, which only took me about 19 hours to get it finished with a template.

I can tell you that Drupal has less code, which usually equates to easier mod creation, but in the case of Joomla2, I think Joomla might win in all fronts except for size, and

that's something I really really don't want to start on at this point.. and besides, whatever I ended up creating, I would definately still prefer Joomla.

So let me ask a different question for you experienced coders here...

Just how bad would you say Joomla's code is and how big of a security threat would a popular website have? Is it bad enough? And would you say that it's really very limited as far as what you can do with it?

There are a couple of other issues, but Joomla2 addresses most of those, such as the Regular Expression vulnerability.

From what I've seen, the code isn't terrible, but in version 1.5 it can be confusing because some of the code comments are in German (I think it was German, but I honestly have no idea). The code is pretty "open source" standard in that some files have coding styles one way, and other files will use a different method to accomplish the same task. This can be frustrating.

You're not limited with Joomla (not largely, anyway). You can create modules easy enough, but templates can prove to be a major pain. Either way, it's doable, and usually less work then writing your own CMS.

Between the two I'd say, if your needs are simple then stick with Joomla but if you need something powerful then Drupal is your best bet. They are both solid with very promising futures but Joomla has a smaller learning curve and consequently less flexibility. Drupal has more flexibility but it will be harder and take longer to learn how to use it.

I look at Joomla as being for front end developers and designers while Drupal is for programmers.